


sparkles/seawater/starlight

by kerberastro



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: (yes), F/F, First Kiss, Sleepovers, hey girlies is it gay to do your friend's makeup and talk about your feelings??, spoilers for fh:sy, talkin' things out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerberastro/pseuds/kerberastro
Summary: She feels Sam’s palm on the side of her face, and then the soft brush in the outer corner of her eyelid. Sam has a steady hand, and she smells faintly like salt water and sunlight and warmth. Like summer.Sam and Aelwyn have a sleepover, y'know, like teen girls do. Nothing gay happens.
Relationships: Aelwen Abernant/Sam Nightingale
Comments: 17
Kudos: 86





	sparkles/seawater/starlight

Aelwyn is at a sleepover. 

She can’t quite remember her last one; one that wasn’t either with an ill advised hookup, or completely necessary due to a night of excessive drinking and partying. No - this time, it’s different, because it’s with her new friend, Sam. It’s different because it’s only eight in the evening, and they’re in their pyjamas already, and  _ god,  _ Aelwyn forgot what this was like. She forgot how to  _ do  _ this. 

Sam made it easy to fall back into it, though; the feeling of being a teenage girl, a phase that Aelwyn often forgets that she’s still in, but hadn’t been making the most of because she was always too busy helping to bring about the apocalypse or resurrect an evil deity. Y’know, just  _ insane _ things like that. 

She always forgets that she’s still eighteen. 

But Sam is such a sweet girl, is the thing, and she knows how to have a sleepover like it’s second nature. She shows Aelwyn her favourite music (they start following each other’s playlists so that they can see each other in their Friend Activity bar), they watch an old horror movie (clinging to each other at the jumpscares, then laughing seconds later), and they bake cookies (Sam keeps trying to steal tastes of the batter off of the spatula, and Aelwyn swats her hand away immediately). 

Now, they’ve winded down a bit, and have headed upstairs. Sam’s room has soft pink walls with strings of tiny, twinkling arcane lights along them, and it has a plush carpet on the floor. Everything about the room screams nostalgia, right down to the smell of the vanilla cupcake scented candle burning over on the bedside table. This would’ve been her preteen self’s dream room, but her parents had always insisted on not letting her paint the walls any sort of colour that wasn’t their ordinal crisp white. Sam even has a beanbag chair, something Aelwyn had in her own room when she was younger, but got rid of upon the beginning of her attendance at Hudol (something about  _ maturity _ and a _ “new year, new me” _ mentality, some bullshit, to be sure; she misses that beanbag chair). 

“Sorry my room’s kinda little kid-ish. I guess I haven't really gotten around to like, revamping it, or whatever.” Sam says, clearly embarrassed, to Aelwyn’s surprise. 

“Are you kidding? It’s adorable, I love it.” Aelwyn replies insistently. “At my old house, I  _ never _ would’ve been allowed to have such a cute room.” 

Sam smiles. “Well, I’m glad you think so. Penelope... always used to bug me about redecorating.” She tells her, her voice dropping at the end of her sentence, and Aelwyn frowns. “Makes me kinda wanna always keep it like this.” 

Aelwyn nods, and it’s quiet for a moment. 

“Do you ever miss her?” Aelwyn asks. “Penelope?” 

“Yeah.” Sam answers quickly; she must not need much time to think about it. She knows. “D’you miss your parents?” 

“Yes.” Aelwyn says, and she hates that she does. She  _ shouldn’t _ , because of everything they did to her and Adaine ( _ especially _ Adaine,  _ god,  _ she’ll never forgive them), but she somehow feels like she  _ should _ , because they’re her  _ parents, _ and all that.

“Wish I didn’t.” She adds with a sort of sad laugh. 

“Same here.” Sam says. 

Aelwyn exhales a lungful of air that she didn’t realize she’d been holding in. “Wanna not talk about it?” She asks. 

“That would be great.” Sam agrees, and she presses play on some kind of girly pop music from her crystal, and while it at first starts off a bit annoying, Aelwyn actually starts to enjoy it the more she listens to it. Sam starts quietly humming the songs under her breath, and she has perfect pitch, but Aelwyn certainly doesn’t point it out. 

“Want me to do your makeup?” Sam asks, suddenly. Aelwyn looks over from where she’s seated on the edge of Sam’s bed, and she sees that she’s already rifling through the top drawer of her vanity; she can hear the telltale sounds of the clicking and clacking of plastic packaging. 

No one’s ever done her makeup before, mostly because she doesn’t entirely trust other people not to fuck it up. Sam always has such pretty eyeshadow, though, and for some reason, Aelwyn likes the idea of Sam doing just about _anything_ that requires the two of them to be within close proximity of one another. (She tries not to think about that part too much, though, because that’s a weird thing to think, isn’t it?).

“Sure,” she replies simply, because  _ why not _ ,  _ right?  _ She’s at a sleepover. At that, Sam looks eager to get started, already going over her eyeshadow palettes, glancing up and down, comparing the colours to Aelwyn’s skin tone. 

She decides on a pinkish orange set of colours, laced with a golden shimmer throughout every shade. “This palette is really cute,” Sam says, “I haven’t used it much because I don’t think the orange goes with blue very well. Also, Penelope gave it to me for my birthday a few years ago, which…  _ Oof,  _ y’know? Bad memories.” She shudders ever so slightly, and Aelwyn winces. 

“I know what you mean.” She says, and it’s true that she does. She also can’t help the thought that Penelope must not have put a lot of thought into getting Sam an eyeshadow palette that would match her blue complexion, giving her the one that she did, and that stings a bit.  _ Some friend _ , she thinks.  _ If it were me, I’d choose something like lavender, or perhaps a pretty sort of silver. Ooh, and maybe even a dark blue liner. Whatever the case, stick with cool tones.  _

She doesn’t realize that she’s staring directly at Sam as she snaps out of her internal monologue. 

“C’mere, lay down on the bed.” Sam says quietly, and okay,  _ that _ sounds more suggestive to Aelwyn than Sam probably had intended for it to, and she only snickers a tiny bit to herself as she complies.

“ _ Damn _ , alright, babe.” Aelwyn jokes with a fake-sultry tone to her voice. She can’t resist the opportunity (old habits die hard,  _ especially _ that of being a major flirt). She throws in a wink,  _ what the hell, right?  _

“Aelwyn!” Sam exclaims, giving her a playful shove as they collapse into giggles, and Aelwyn realizes that she hasn’t let herself laugh like this with anybody but Adaine (and even with her, only just recently) in a very,  _ very  _ long time. She also realizes that Sam is a little flustered. She doesn’t point it out. 

As their laughter subsides, Sam finally climbs onto her bed and straddles Aelwyn around the waist, the eyeshadow palette in her hand and two fluffy brushes with sparkly plastic handles between her index and middle fingers. Then, she leans down and, in a way that could easily be described as  _ tender,  _ brushes a few blonde strands away from Aelwyn’s face. It’s a good thing that she doesn’t blush easily, or else she’d be burning in the face by now because this is  _ so much  _ and she’s just not used to this much  _ sweetness  _ when it comes to closeness, if that’s even what this is _.  _ It’s not, right? 

_ But what if it is?  _

She decides that she wouldn’t be opposed to that. 

Sam coats a brush in a deep pink colour, then taps it on the edge of the plastic container, sending specks of sparkling dust flying in the opposite direction. 

“Close your eyes,” Sam whispers, and Aelwyn does. She feels Sam’s palm on the side of her face, and then the soft brush in the outer corner of her eyelid. Sam has a steady hand, and she smells faintly like salt water and sunlight and warmth. Like summer. Aelwyn catches herself taking a deep inhale, discreet as she can be, and if Sam notices, she doesn’t say a single word as she blends the colour with gentle, circular sweeps of her brush. 

Aelwyn is trying to understand what she likes so much about the position she’s found herself in. Is it the sturdy warmth of Sam’s legs around her midsection, the quiet sound of her voice, humming absentmindedly along to the music, the care she takes in applying each colour to her eyes? 

“So…” Sam says, and Aelwyn can hear her grinning. “You and Fabian, huh?” 

Aelwyn can't help but scoff out a rather shocked laugh. “Goodness me, word’s gotten around, hasn’t it?” 

“Uhh,  _ yeah _ , girl. People around school think you’re like...  _ a thing.”  _

Aelwyn opens her eyes just so that Sam can see her roll them. “Well, let it be known that we’re not. We hooked up like, twice, and then moved on with our lives. It’s _not_ happening.” She says matter-of-factly. She and Fabian are just friends now, and to be honest, she isn’t sure if she really even liked him in any other way in the first place; she just wanted to be distracted, and to do something that was a little bit bad for her mental health (a horrible mistake in the long run, really, but she _did_ like getting her kisses in). Eventually, though, she realized that if she was going to pursue something like this, then having it be completely shallow by nature wasn’t exactly the way to go. 

“Gotcha,” Sam says, and Aelwyn can tell that her smile never left her face. 

Sam continues to carefully add more colours to different areas of her eyelids, still softly humming away to the music playing, sometimes mumble-singing the lyrics. There’s a catchy little hook that repeats in this song, over and over, and Aelwyn catches onto it, joining Sam, who giggles when she notices, and Aelwyn grins. 

“Why so curious? Are you into Fabian or something?” Aelwyn asks, lightly poking Sam in the stomach, who recoils with a laugh. 

“Wh- no! No way! I just… The other maidens were curious, is all. You know them, always into the hot gossip.” Sam answers, a little too rambly to sound completely honest. 

Aelwyn crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t buy it,” she says, a teasing sort of tone in her voice. 

“I’m serious! I do  _ not  _ have a thing for  _ Fabian _ .” 

“Okay,” Aelwyn says quietly, followed by. “Do you have a thing for someone else?” 

At that, Sam pauses for a moment, and Aelwyn briefly wonders if she’s said something wrong. Sam sighs, “I don’t know. Nothing major, or anything.” 

Aelwyn hums in acknowledgement. She’s trying to be a better, kinder person lately, and part of that is knowing when to shut up. She decides to not press any further, so she closes her eyes again. Sam swirls a larger brush across her cheeks for blush, then taps her index and middle fingers along her cheekbones and down the bridge of her nose for highlighter. She’s so careful, and Aelwyn finds herself not flinching in the slightest under her gentle touches. It feels unusual, but it’s not a  _ bad  _ kind of unusual. Perhaps it’s more along the lines of feeling  _ new.  _

“Done.” Sam says, and Aelwyn opens her eyes again. For the first time, she looks up into Sam’s soft gaze, just barely a foot above her, and finds her there, eyes half lidded and sparkling blue, like a deep, deep ocean reflecting sunlight. They’re beautiful,  _ she’s  _ beautiful, and Aelwyn can’t look away. She looks at her lips, and she can’t look away. She can’t look away, she can’t -

Sam’s hand doesn’t leave the side of Aelwyn’s face. 

“You look so pretty,” Sam whispers. 

“Well, I should hope so, I’d expect nothing less from you.” Aelwyn says in a jokingly haughty sort of tone, batting her eyelashes. 

They both laugh, and then Sam says, “I mean, just you. Makeup or no.” 

“Oh.”

Aelwyn knows she’s pretty, she’s had more boys (and girls, sometimes) than she can count to tell her so, but hearing it said so  _ sincerely _ , it feels different. 

“Well, thank you.” She says, still giggling a bit. 

She’s still staring up at Sam. 

“Sam?” She practically breathes. 

“Yeah?” 

“Would you like to kiss me?” Aelwyn asks, softly,  _ so  _ softly. 

She starts to regret it as soon as the words are leaving her mouth, but then Sam is nodding her head, eyes wide, and Aelwyn subtly mirrors her. 

The  _ leaning in  _ part feels like it lasts a whole hour, and  _ oh dear, Aelwyn’s never kissed a girl before _ (well,  _ soberly,  _ at least) _ ,  _ but once their lips press together, her worry fades away quickly. Sam’s lips are  _ so  _ soft and they taste like strawberry chapstick and she kisses her unlike anyone else she’s ever kissed. She certainly doesn’t kiss like Fabian, because it doesn’t feel at all like she’s trying to be  _ perfect, _ and she’s not trying to take over like he used to. She’s more following  _ Aelwyn’s  _ lead, which is, again, not something she’s used to, but she can certainly handle it. She moves slowly, pulling her in close with an arm around her waist, and Sam follows, her hand still on Aelwyn’s cheek, thumb stroking her cheekbone. 

It’s then that any and all plans for Aelwyn to check out her makeup in the mirror are cast aside. The state of her face, however, is far from the forefront of her mind as she tries to figure out what  _ this _ even  _ is _ , kissing Sam, holding her close, daydreaming of this being her, this being  _ them _ , for a  _ long _ time. 

She trusts that her makeup looks perfect, though. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for readinggggg <3 hmu on tumblr @jolenethegreen or on twitter @kingjetrocks !!


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